


Could Have Danced All Night

by Geonn



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-15
Updated: 2011-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 10:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/pseuds/Geonn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Idris decides the madness was worth it. (BIG spoilers for 6x04 The Doctor's Wife!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Could Have Danced All Night

Idris could have danced all night, spread her wings, done a thousand things, and all that. Maybe if she had life would have been different. Maybe if she had, she would have had a real life and not a maddening mishmash. The first time happened after a party, on a dark street. She had been told all her life to avoid lonely streets after dark, but she was still humming the music from the party. The entire world seemed to be a lovely thing and danger was a foreign concept.

She didn't even notice the change when the Rift took her. She had her eyes closed, spinning in place as she hummed some marvelous tune, and then she was gone. Taken. To her mind, the street had simply been replaced by a large pitted stone surface. The sky above her burned. She watched and waited for it to end, but it never did. She learned to stop counting time. Hunger became a part of her being. She couldn't sleep because the fire screamed.

And then, as suddenly as it was made strange, the world was normal again. A man named Jack, a kind and handsome man named Jack, told her that she had been taken and returned by the Rift. He took her somewhere safe, someplace she would be cared for. She liked it there, but she was frightened. She told Handsome Jack that she didn't care to be a prisoner and he sadly let her go. But she knew he watched her.

She felt like she could be normal again. Maybe one day. Far from now. But before she could even try, it took her again. The Rift wasn't like lightning. It had a taste for her now. She was marked. It took her again. It took her away to a horrible place. She was there for so long, eternities, or maybe just a few moments. When she was taken back, she sobbed for nearly three months without end.

The final time the Rift took her, she went to a very dark place. There were people there. They called themselves Auntie, Uncle, Nephew. Nephew would have terrified her before, but he was far from the most terrifying thing she had ever seen.

Uncle and Nephew and Auntie lived on House, and House had plans for her. He mentioned a Time Lord. Handsome Jack had mentioned a Time Lord. In passing and when he thought she wasn't listening. Handsome Jack was brave and kind and seemed to love a "Time Lord," so the very mention of their name made her hopeful. Perhaps a Time Lord could ease her suffering and her pain and save her from the Rift.

Then she died.

Then she lived.

She wasn't exactly Idris anymore. Something else was inside of her, moving bits around. Her car had been hijacked and she was a mere passenger. Finally allowed to curl up in the backseat while someone else took the wheel. She was happy to let this TARDIS creature occupy her. It was quiet, in her mind, and the scary things could be more easily pushed aside back here.

And the TARDIS had a Time Lord. Oh, the Doctor! He was lovely and quite mad. Idris chuckled to herself at his antics, and that made the TARDIS look at her.

 _Oh, hello. I didn't see you there. Terribly sorry._

 _It's okay. I like being ignored for a change._

 _And I like being seen!_

 _So it works out well for both of us._

 _Quite well!_

Idris loved the TARDIS. It was like being wrapped and safe, protected by a shell. The TARDIS was powerful and strong and mighty. Idris felt immeasurably safe within her. It was as if her body had simply been waiting for this moment. Her body was meant to stand on this asteroid with this man. She felt their ages - oh, they were both so old! - and she felt their love - they were very much in love - and she knew they had never spoken before, had never even truly considered the other as a separate entity. They were just the Doctor and his TARDIS. And because of her, they were speaking.

They were in love. Seven hundred years of companionship and trust and support. Idris felt the Doctor's pain. Oh, how many people walked away and broke the poor man's heart? She saw their names in the TARDIS' mind. Sarah Jane and Rose and Donna and Martha and Ace and Jack and Jo and Liz and Astrid and Leela and the Brig and Peri and Aldric and Tegan and so many more far too many for her bear.

But they never left him alone. He always had one thing left, one thing he could count on. And the TARDIS had taken him as surely as he had taken her. They had stolen each other, been made for each other. Never before had Idris seen a couple so truly destined to be together, and it was her face that he would see when he thought of her in the future.

 _You're my purpose._

 _Yes. I think that must be it. Thank you, Idris._

Through her eyes, filtered through the TARDIS' mind, Idris saw such wonderful things. The Rift had shown her only darkness and pain, but the universe was so much more than that. The TARDIS, perhaps as an apology for taking her body, gave Idris access to her mind. Stars and galaxies and great swirling clouds of dust that were far beyond her understanding to measure. She was a fleck of dust and the universe was infinitely bigger than what she had ever imagined.

 _Thank you, TARDIS._

She knew her death was coming. TARDIS felt it, and Idris could sense it. But she wasn't sad. She wasn't afraid. Her life had ended long ago and she had continued living for just this moment. This horrible and beautiful moment when an impossibly old man and an ancient entity stood face to face and said hello to one another.

Idris felt warmth. It swirled within her and, for the first time since the party, she felt the world spinning under her feet. Even if the world was far, far away. She spread her arms and smiled as she felt the TARDIS' heart break with simultaneous joy and sorrow. The TARDIS was euphoric to have had the opportunity, distraught to have it ending.

Idris and the TARDIS were alone in the dark, there at the end. They held one another and waited, waited for the last spark to fade. The TARDIS would live on in the little magnificent blue box, but in a way she was dying, too. Her life had been so short. It was unfair, and it was the fairest thing of all. What other TARDIS had been allowed to walk in a human form, to speak with their operator, to see the universe with _eyes_? The TARDIS had done something no other TARDIS had done. Sorrow could be joyful, in a moment like that.

And Idris had been repaid for her anguish. The madness was worth it, if this was how it ended. In beauty and love.

 _Thank you,_ they said together.

Their lips touched and, in a flash, the TARDIS was gone and Idris was quickly fading.

The universe constricted around her, but it wasn't frightening. She had done, seen, felt more than she could ever have dreamed possible. She had done a thousand things, spread her wings.

She could have danced all night.


End file.
